“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856), p. 176
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
1890s
Source: The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890-1894 being criticisms contributed week by week to The World (New York: Vienna House, 1973)
Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist
Source: The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, 1836, p. 234
Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist
Source: " The Poet of Pessimism https://www.henrysalt.co.uk/library/essay/the-poet-of-pessimism/", Vegetarian Review, August 1896 <br class="br">Context: We work for an ideal, not because we believe the ideal is destined to be triumphant, but because we are impelled so to work, and cannot, without violence to our best instincts, act otherwise. We protest against cruelty and injustice for the same reason, not merely because we feel that the dawn of a better day is at hand, but because such a protest has to be made, and we know intuitively that we must help to make it. Of the event we can have no absolute assurance—it rests for other minds and other hands than our—but we can at least be assured that we have done what was natural and inevitable to us, and that, whether successful or unsuccessful, there was no other course for a thoughtful man to take.
Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist
Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable," w:Good Reads, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/53895656-building-the-new-american-economy-smart-fair-and-sustainable
Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian
Howard Zinn on War (2000), Ch. 14: Vietnam: A Matter of Perspective http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Vietnam_Perspective_HZOW.html <br class="br">Context: Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak. So far, too much of the debate on Vietnam has observed these limits.
David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
§ 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)
John Ruskin book Modern Painters
Volume V, part VIII, chapter 1, section 4 (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)
“All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.””
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician
They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)